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Imperialist imagery overload


Ivanov

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I'm a little disappointed that all the screens during the scenario loading, feature only the imperialist forces. I haven't seen even one image of Soviet forces. You may say it's irrelevant but since some scenarios load for ages, I'd like to have some variety in this field 😉 I guess we'll need to wait for the mods, but I'm just curious why only one side is featured on the images? If I recall correctly, in other CM games there has been always a greater variety and both sides were represented. 

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If you can suggest some suggest some archival Soviet photos that are available without licensing issues and are of similar quality, I’d bet they could be added.  The US stuff comes from National Archives with no strings attached.

 

I looked myself, but language skills limit how effectively I can search.

Edited by akd
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At the very beginning of the Cold War Beta I asked the obvious question: Is this title being constructed from the viewpoint of 'Glorious Soviet army conquers the west' or from the perspective 'Valiant NATO forces hold back the red hoard'? (CMRT, for example, is primarily from the viewpoint of the Russians winning WWII.) After some discussion it was settled that the Cold War title is primarily viewed through American eyes, not Soviet. So leaning heavily on depictions of American forces is a deliberate choice

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1 hour ago, akd said:

If you can suggest some suggest some archival Soviet photos that are available without licensing issues and are of similar quality, I’d bet they could be added.  The US stuff comes from National Archives with no strings attached.

 

I looked myself, but language skills limit how effectively I can search.

You can find quite a lot of free images of Cold War era hardware in Wikimedia. Most of it are post CW era, but you can also find stuff from the period of interest:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Decontaminant_of_a_T-64_MBT.JPEG

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2 hours ago, MikeyD said:

At the very beginning of the Cold War Beta I asked the obvious question: Is this title being constructed from the viewpoint of 'Glorious Soviet army conquers the west' or from the perspective 'Valiant NATO forces hold back the red hoard'? (CMRT, for example, is primarily from the viewpoint of the Russians winning WWII.) After some discussion it was settled that the Cold War title is primarily viewed through American eyes, not Soviet. So leaning heavily on depictions of American forces is a deliberate choice

If that was a decision of the dev team, than further discussion is pointless. I am surprised nevertheless. CMBS or CMSF have an obvious pro-western bias, but the images of both sides are present in those games. Another difference with other CM titles is, that CW uses pictures while other games were using computer generated models of military hardware. So I thought that there was maybe a smaller budget for the eye candy in CW.

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34 minutes ago, Thewood1 said:

The source for that pic no longer exists.  Not sure BFC can use it legally.

 

13 minutes ago, akd said:

And, of course, very low quality regardless.

Guys it was only an example. Just type in Wikimedia some names of Soviet era equipment like T-72 or BMP-1 and there's stuff to be found.

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1 hour ago, Ivanov said:

 

Guys it was only an example. Just type in Wikimedia some names of Soviet era equipment like T-72 or BMP-1 and there's stuff to be found.

You will get 1000s of images of T-72s, most probably attributed to various journalists or publications (which I think often have understandings with Wikipedia about use as long as attributed that would not apply to a commercial company).  Regardless, pictures of T-72s is not what is needed.  Pictures of the Soviet Army operating T-72s (or doing whatever) in 1979-82 is what is needed (even if you just wanted to do a nice consistent mod to fit with the US archival photos).  Try searching Wikimedia for “Soviet Army 1982” or similar such terms and you get hardly anything.  I remember that tank decon. pic coming up in one previous search I made!  Also, IMO parade photos do not fit at all thematically, nor does Afghanistan.

Edited by akd
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1 hour ago, sawomi said:

There is some great stuff there that would fit with the existing loading screens with some photoshop work, but no provenance for the material whatsoever.  A handful have watermarks from wherever they were originally pulled.  Could make the basis for a good mod.

image.thumb.jpeg.5bbd0b8778f1cd65a9d69b833e6bb94b.jpeg

image.thumb.jpeg.6ad3e1212d60b3cb1976cfc26ae66384.jpeg

image.thumb.jpeg.517fa9516f1fe28cd731d4e6a677782a.jpeg

 

Edited by akd
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13 hours ago, Ivanov said:

If that was a decision of the dev team, than further discussion is pointless. I am surprised nevertheless.

I don't believe this is true. Or perhaps if this *is* true, they've done a pretty bad job of making Cold War a US-centric title (whoops?), given the amount of effort put into the Soviet forces, how they're structured, the campaigns and the Tutorial missions for Soviet Doctrine.

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4 minutes ago, domfluff said:

I don't believe this is true. Or perhaps if this *is* true, they've done a pretty bad job of making Cold War a US-centric title (whoops?), given the amount of effort put into the Soviet forces, how they're structured, the campaigns and the Tutorial missions for Soviet Doctrine.

Exactly what I said on the Beta board - have a like.

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We have two beta testers who said two different things. Mikey D said that the game portrays Cold War through American eyes and that the lack of Soviet imagery, was a conscious choice. Combatintman on the other hand reaffirmed, that there's plenty of Soviet content in the game. I also think that the red forces are covered pretty extensively in the game to justify a separate imagery. As to the free images, there would be sufficient of them available. I've seen them in other games. For example one of the images above was used for free as a cover of a recent board game. I'd say that photos taken during the Soviet era, probably belong now to a public domain ( oh joys of communism)!

brez_war_cover.jpg


Personally I would prefer custom made models of equipment of both sides like in other CM games. I always thought they were a nice touch.

Edited by Ivanov
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The loading images are my only, minor, disappointment with this game so far. The grainy, green images mean the subjects are quite hard to make out. I for one much prefer the sharp AFV models of previous titles, though AKD's sample images above or equivalents would be much better too. 

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I second the premise that the main and loading screens should be side-neutral. In all the CM games I play, I generally play both (all) sides depending on how the fancy takes me. I was surprised at the comment about the US perspective.  I didn't get that at all, which is why the lack of Soviet kit slightly irked me. On an irritation scale of 1-10 this is about a 2 so not very bothered but surely easy to change?

Plus, from an iconography point of view, the 3 pix akd posted are evocative. The current ones are not as "sexy" from a gaming perspective.

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On 5/24/2021 at 11:39 PM, Ivanov said:

I'm a little disappointed that all the screens during the scenario loading, feature only the imperialist forces. I haven't seen even one image of Soviet forces. You may say it's irrelevant but since some scenarios load for ages, I'd like to have some variety in this field 😉 I guess we'll need to wait for the mods, but I'm just curious why only one side is featured on the images? If I recall correctly, in other CM games there has been always a greater variety and both sides were represented. 

Thank you for bringing the issue to attention, comrade.

Soviet pics matter.

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You are entitled to your opinion, but iconography is important.  I expect you know enough about WW2 Germany to know that is the case. It's not just that the game doesn't favour one side of the other, difficult as that is to achieve, but also players see that is how everything in the game appears.

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On 5/24/2021 at 9:49 PM, Ivanov said:

 

Guys it was only an example. Just type in Wikimedia some names of Soviet era equipment like T-72 or BMP-1 and there's stuff to be found.

Well, there is an easy fix. Just create a collection of „force specific backgrounds“ with all the pic‘s you want, submit it to @Bootie and ask him to upload it to the CM Mod Depot.

Have a look there first, you will find plenty of examples of force specific background mods for other CM titles in the Mod Depot.

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